Back in the Headlines

Titus wasn’t used to people turning away from him, especially not when their eyes had just been devouring him. He frowned. ‘My name is Titus Alexander,’ he said, watching her reflection closely to see if there were any signs of recognition, but no. She just carried on calmly wiping that garish lipstick from her mouth. And suddenly he found himself wondering what those lips might taste like beneath his. Whether they’d be able to inflict as much magic on his body as they’d done with the microphone, when she’d started to sing.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Alexander?’ she asked, in a bored tone.

Titus didn’t bother correcting the fundamental mistake she was making about his title. Past experience had taught him that it was best to keep that particular fact hidden for as long as possible. Especially from women. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘So talk.’

‘And I’d prefer it if we were face to face.’

Her eyes met his in the mirror. ‘Why?’

Because your eyes are so incredibly blue that I want to see them up close, he found himself thinking—before ruthlessly quashing the random thought. She was a fallen star, a cuckold and a money-grabber—and he was about to call time on her latest little scam. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer not to have to address your back,’ he drawled.

Her lips now bare of the startling colour she always wore to perform, Roxy slowly turned back to face him. ‘How’s that?’ she questioned sarcastically.

Titus felt that same hard aching at his groin and for a moment he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Because now his attention was once again distracted by her breasts. They were pushing blatantly against the sequin-sprinkled top in a way which seemed to be silently begging him to touch them. With an effort, he tore his gaze away and stared instead into the sapphire brilliance of her eyes. ‘I believe you know Martin Murray?’

Roxy shrugged. ‘I know a lot of people.’

‘You know him rather well, I believe,’ suggested Titus.

She registered his soft insinuation but she didn’t respond to it. She didn’t have to justify herself to privileged men who gatecrashed her dressing room. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Actually, it is my business.’

Roxy threw the last wodge of cotton wool into the bin and rose to her feet, realising that she was still wearing her too-high stage shoes. ‘Look, it’s late, I’m tired and I want to go home. So why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me what you’re doing, marching in here and asking me all sorts of questions with that...that judgemental air you seem to have?’

‘Maybe because I have the right to be judgmental,’ he retorted. ‘Since you happen to be illegally subletting one of my apartments.’

Roxy screwed her nose up, but something in his expression had made her pulse start to quicken. ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life. You’re not my landlord.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I know so. Or rather, I know my landlord.’

‘You live in the top-floor apartment of a large house in Notting Hill Gate, right?’

How the hell did he know that? Another wave of apprehension prickled over her skin, but Roxy hid it with a defiant look. ‘Have you been stalking me?’

At this, Titus gave a low laugh. ‘In your dreams, sweetheart. You think I’m the kind of man who needs to stalk any woman—let alone some second-rate singer who’s fallen on times so hard that she’s reduced to working in a dump like this?’

Something inside her retracted painfully but still Roxy didn’t react. She was damned if she would let him see how much his words hurt. Or how much they had hit home. Instead, she managed another defiant stare. ‘Then how come you know where I live?’

‘I just told you. Because I happen to own the apartment you live in. In fact, I own the entire house,’ he added.

Roxy felt the weight of her long hair brushing against a neck still sheened with sweat after her performance. ‘No, you don’t,’ she croaked. ‘You can’t possibly. Martin owns it.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ enquired Titus idly. ‘Was he pretending to be wealthy when he was trying to get you into bed?’ His voice lowered with exasperation. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that he might be lying? Because that’s what married men do. They lie to their wives and they lie to their mistresses. The wives usually mind because they have their family to think of—but the mistresses know it’s all part of the whole sordid game. And so they overlook it—as they overlook so much else.’ His grey eyes bored into her with undisguised contempt. ‘Because in my experience, women who try to steal another woman’s husband have no morals, nor any scruples either.’

Stuffing her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans so he wouldn’t see they were trembling, Roxy shook her head. ‘I’ve never tried to steal another woman’s husband!’

‘No?’ His dark eyebrows shot up towards the tawny thickness of his hair. ‘You just let him set you up in some kind of tawdry love nest?’

‘It isn’t like that!’

‘I’m not interested in what it’s “like”,’ he snapped. ‘The only thing I’m interested in is that one of my employees has been illegally renting you one of my apartments and I want you out!’

‘Your...employee?’ Roxy echoed, racking her brains for some kind of recognition, but there was none. Titus was a pretty unforgettable name and she’d never heard Martin Murray mention it before. ‘I’ve never heard of you, Mr Alexander. For all I know, you could be a complete fantasist.’

‘You think so? Then maybe this might help convince you that what I’m saying is genuine.’ Titus extracted a business card from the pocket of his cashmere overcoat and held it out towards her.

Removing her hand from the pocket of her jeans, Roxy took it, instantly aware of the expensive quality of the card—as expensive as everything else about him. Embossed black letters stood proud on the costly cream surface and as her eyes focused on it properly she experienced a strange, lurching feeling as the letters formed themselves into words.

Titus Alexander, Duke of Torchester.

The letters blurred again and suddenly her knees felt wobbly. It had been a long time since she’d eaten—she never liked to take food close to a performance—and in any other circumstances she might have slumped down in the chair, in shock. But some instinct told her that would be dangerous. That he would be dangerous if she showed any sign of weakness. She looked up into his cold eyes, her heart still racing. ‘You’re...you’re the Duke of Torchester?’

‘Yes, I’m the Duke of Torchester,’ he drawled. ‘And my late father employed your lover, Martin Murray, as his accountant. Starting to get your memory back are you, Miss Carmichael? Does my name ring a bell?’

Of course it rang a bell! Roxy nodded, willing her face to remain calm. It was imperative that she held onto her poise. To act as if she didn’t care—because she remembered everything she’d ever heard about the aristocratic young Duke.

He’s a ruthless bastard.

He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Women love him.

Roxy’s eyes were drawn to the unsmiling perfection of his mouth and the grey ice of his eyes and thought that, yes, women probably did love him. She could imagine it would be easy to fall for someone who had the looks and lineage of Titus Alexander. And equally easy to imagine him inflicting pain and heartbreak on any female who was stupid enough to do so.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said flatly.

‘No?’ His tawny-dark eyebrows rose again in arrogant question. ‘What precisely is perplexing you?’

‘It’s Martin’s flat.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

Roxy nodded, but even as he asked the question she began to understand all the things which had never really added up before. Why Martin had always insisted she pay her rent in cash. And why he had instructed her to tell anyone who asked that she was simply ‘house-sitting’. She stared into Titus’s grim face and it came as a shock to realise that she believed the word of this arrogant aristocrat above a man she’d known for years. ‘That’s what he told me.’

‘Well, he was lying,’ he iced out. ‘A lying cheat of an accountant who my father made the mistake of trusting. Only my father is no longer around—and Martin Murray no longer works for my family. I’m in charge now and I intend clearing up the mess which your lover has made of the estate.’ His grey eyes glittered dangerously. ‘An estate which will no longer provide a refuge for wasters and chancers. So I want you out by the end of the week.’

Roxy felt a paralysing fear begin to well up inside her and she fought successfully to dampen it down. Because fear was an emotion she was familiar with and she’d learnt that the only way to conquer it was to face it head-on. She knew that the moment you gave into it, you would be lost and that was not going to happen. Not with this arrogant posh-boy who had just marched into her dressing room with his inbuilt sense of entitlement. Clearing her throat, she tried to make her voice sound as cool as his. ‘I don’t think it works quite like that. I think the law states that you’ll need to give me more notice than one week.’

Titus flattened his lips into an angry line as a slow rage began to flare up inside him. How dared she try to defy him? He thought about how his father had betrayed his mother, with a mistress as ruthless as this foxy-looking singer. He thought about the woeful state of the estate’s finances and the way her crooked accountant of a boyfriend had been creaming off huge amounts for himself. Her married boyfriend, he thought in disgust.

He knew that his rage was disproportionate to her crime of having questionable morals, but Titus didn’t care. Sometimes a person just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—and Roxanne Carmichael was that person.

‘The law isn’t on your side,’ he said silkily. ‘Because you’ve been breaking it.’